Project Drawball

DyeStat pwns Bulgarian Flag on Drawball.Com

August 9, 2006 - Identified only as “DYESTAT,” the black logo appeared a week ago and has local and global Bulgarians wondering what could possibly have unified enough manpower for the pwning of their flag on the relatively unknown graffiti-art website Drawball.com.

Resourceful queriers will have already guessed at its internet domain and may have found the answer surprising: running.

DyeStat.com is the internet home to high school track, field, and cross country running. These runners, mostly high schoolers, have at the time of this writing taken over a large section of real estate, including what once was a Bulgarian flag, in the lower left quadrant of Drawball.

drawball.com zoomed in to DyeStat tag

[Photo updated 8/13]

Drawball.com is a global graffiti canvas. Most of the time its main page looks like typical graffiti art: many small images, lots of scribbling, all done in various styles. In order to draw on Drawball, a user has to zoom in tremendously (and then has to solve a puzzle - connect the dots but don’t cross your own lines!). This confines the size of their art relative to that of the main site. But the scale of Drawball is only half of its brilliance: also, an artist’s ink supply is rationed. The more an artist draws, the faster their virtual ink bottle refills, enticing users to come back and draw frequently.

So the territory one user can cover is limited; to draw large images, collaboration is required.

And collaborate they did. Early last week, a contingent of the high school runners from DyeStat, their numbers unknown, drew a very nice, red, and much smaller “Dyestat,” including the track wing logo, to the left of the current site. Their numbers grew, and so did the size of letters, and by late last week the current large black capital letters spelling “DYESTAT” were established over a Bulgarian flag. The takeover of this territory is not political, though in the history of Drawball there are examples of political takeover. Rather, it is the nature of Drawball to evolve as new tags are painted over old art.

Throughout last week, the established DYESTAT black font alternately suffered and required repair and strengthening as a consistent white, green, and red scribbling offense was mounted against the invasion. The only clue to this party is their ostensibly Bulgarian heritage.

Currently the white, green, and red flag is yielding to Dyestat, the background is turning faintly into what we can only surmise will be another track wing logo. These runners are either in number to be reckoned with or are a few serious artists with way too much time and ink on their hands.

We wish them all the best in their future residency on Drawball. Log in to Drawball! If you’re zoomed in all the way and you see scribbling right before your eyes, you know it’s a runner working on their team project.